


Roaring 20s

by CHAOSevangeline



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Dancing, Gen, High School, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Prom, School Dances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 10:52:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18119342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CHAOSevangeline/pseuds/CHAOSevangeline
Summary: Pressed against the wall, hands behind his back while the palms were tickled by the rough wall, Sal was standing in the gymnasium of his school. It hadn’t ever been as noisy as that night.The last school year was over.The last exams were done.He and his friends were free, at least from the prison called Nockfell High School.And him, Sal, wasn’t enjoying that ball at all.





	Roaring 20s

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!  
> This is a one-shot I've been working on in the past few days.  
> Please note that english isn’t my main language and this is my first attempt at translating something I have written! I hope it to be at least understandable AHAH I think this shot is pretty decent in italian but in english… I don’t know.  
> Oh, another thing!  
> I was inspired by the song “Roaring 20s” by Panic! At the Disco. I know that this can’t be played at Sal’s last prom considering the story is set in the 90s but I suggest you to listen to it while reading. A part of the events is strictly based on the song!  
> I’d be glad to hear your opinions but please just constructive criticism if needed--  
> I dedicate di shot to my best friend Rika, because she is just as Larry is in this fanfiction.  
> Hope you like it!

Pressed against the wall, hands behind his back while the palms were tickled by the rough wall, Sal was standing in the gymnasium of his school. It hadn’t ever been as noisy as that night.  
The last school year was over.  
The last exams were done.  
He and his friends were free, at least from the prison called Nockfell High School.  
And him, Sal, wasn’t enjoying that ball at all.  
That year’s graduating class looked so disposed to spree like Sal had never seen one before. But he wasn’t feeling like it.  
The lights were reflecting on the dance floor, the discs succeeded one another in a vortex of notes that were pumped by the stereo’s speakers after they were mixed by a student’s unskilled fingers.  
«He hasn’t any rythm sense at all, huh?»  
In that dark corner of the improvised ballroom, Larry’s voice reached Sal’s ears without the need for him to scream.  
Larry had an amazing ear for music, even if he ended up listening just to “that angry metal he loves a lot” – like Ashley used to call it. Listening to that inconclusive remixes of a genre he didn’t even like must have been a painful torture for him.  
«Yup.»  
Sal hadn’t moved his eyes from the dance floor not even a second, not even to reply to Larry’s question.  
Todd was unleashing on the dance floor with Neil.  
He said that dancing was something beyond his abilities, that if he had put just a sigle foot on the dance floor he would have probably been so in dissonance with the situation that he could have provoked a cataclism. Neil usually let Todd fascinate him with his scientific-like speeches but that time he chose to take his hand and drag him to the dance floor ending that way his silly jabbering. Now Todd was dancing something that reminded somehow a latin dance, maybe a Salsa. Pratically his movements and Neil’s ones looked so confused but also beautiful just because they were the two ones dancing it. They seemed so happy.   
Sal would have liked to feel as happy as them.  
He’d liked to feel in his place with the brick red jacket he had bought months earlier on. He had thought that the prom’s night he would have been crazy enthusiast to wear it like when he was waiting for that evening. In that moment being that gaudy made him just feel sick.  
It wasn’t because everything was about to end. He knew that he and all his friends would have gone on with their studies even if in different places. He knew that they would have stayed the same.  
But sometimes Sal simply wasn’t ok. He wasn’t able to.  
Sometimes his brain didn’t work, sometimes he had more nightmares than he was used to. He literally had dragged himself along to the end of classes and with so much pressure and fadigue on his shoulders he burned the last spark of energy he had inside him just to get himself to that prom. There wasn’t anything verve left to party.  
He wasn’t in the mood but a voice in the back of his head shouted him that he couldn’t lose that chance.  
The song switched and Sal felt that shiver. The shiver you feel when the right song plays in the right moment while you’re the only element out of frequency because you don’t feel in the right place.  
Sal was so desperatly trying to enjoy his prom night staring at Todd and his fiance he didn’t even notice the small sigh that escaped from his lips and Larry’s gaze.  
It looked like Sal was trying to say himself something like «why, Sal, huh? Why can’t you just enjoy something?»  
«It’s not your first prom but it definitely looks like that.»  
Sal turned his head.  
«What do you mean?»  
«You’re a nerve wreack», he said. «I think we should be on the floor, not here.»  
«Go, I’ll catch up with you later.»  
A small laugh from Larry. He was smiling like he knew everything without saying a word.  
«What?»  
«I won’t leave you behind, my dear Sally Face!»  
Larry knew. He knew everything even though Sal didn’t say a word about his condition for the past weeks. He knew that Sal wasn’t feeling well and he tried his best to make him feel a bit more comfortable. He made him listen to a new Sanity’s Fall’s song, they played together with a new videogame. Sal let him near but didn’t open up like he always did.  
There was no need for him to explain. He just needed to distract himself, knock off his mind from that thoughts and uneasiness that made him feel just more uneasy.  
«I don’t want to dance, you…»  
Larry glanced at the floor.  
Sal’s foot was moving following music’s rythm as his legs did.  
«You don’t want to dance. Really?»  
His usual dancing style was just headbanging – with ominous consequences, sometimes – in the basement where Larry lived. He hadn’t ever danced in front of all that people and even though he was so good at saying that he wanted to be himself and telling other to be, he didn’t sound convincing enough to himself. He went to a prom for the first time the year before, and he spent it in front of the school because Todd was drunk. Luckily.  
«Go», Sal said again. «I’ll wait for Ash.»  
«I won’t go dancing if you don’t come with me.»  
«Larry…» Sal sighed exasperated. «Listen, I suck at dancing.»  
«That’s not true. I have never seen someone headbanging as good as you do!»  
Those words made Sal smile a little.  
«That’s not dancing…»  
He did it when he met Larry just because he was surprisingly feeling very comfortable.  
«Plus.» It seemed like Larry wanted to talk about something else. «The problem isn’t just you don’t know how to dance. Right?»  
Yes, he was right.  
Sal just wanted to disappear and he knew for sure that dancing would have made him feel even worse. Or maybe not.  
But then the song he liked became slower, the rythm firm, and Sal understood that the moment was perfect for him to reach the dance floor, letting everyone look at him if they wanted to.  
He saw Larry walking away. His white shirt and the loosen necktie looked so strange on him considering his usual style. Lisa wasn’t able to make him wear a jacket, though.  
Sal looked at him in the eyes while he was drawing back to the dance floor.  
Larry stopped and theatrically held out his hand towards him.  
«Come on, Sally Face! Let’s go show the world and even yourself your dancing skills!» Larry encouraged him. «You will soon reach your roaring twenties, do you want to waste them like that?»  
Sal stared at that hand.  
He didn’t want to.  
Were they just talking about a simple dance, at that point?  
He held his hand, hesitant, and felt Larry’s fingers holding his ones. Sal walked past the dance floor’s threshold without breathing like he was trespassing an invisible barrier beyond which an unknown world could have swallowed him.  
After that dash, Larry attracted Sal to himself. Sal knew what he wanted to do. He moved his feet away, still holding his hand. They looked like a folding fan at the center of the dance floor.  
Everyone was beginning to stop so they could watch them and just for once Sal didn’t care.  
He didn’t care if he wasn’t good enough, he didn’t care about the prosthetic some people still looked with disgust in their eyes everyday.  
He didn’t care about the thoughts that made getting out of bed so difficult and not even about anguish. He didn’t feel anything except for Larry’s hand.  
Larry looked so concentrated, even more than necessary, but Sal found it funny.  
He made two steps back, three forward.  
A twirl.  
That dance didn’t make any sense but it was liberating.  
It looked like it was screaming how little he cared about everything, except for the good things, the one that counted.  
Suddenly he felt his ponytails caressing the floor.  
«Larry!» he exclaimed, laughing.  
That casquè was totally unexcpected but his body responded without thinking and one of his legs was up in the air past Larry’s back.  
«I knew you wanted to dance!»  
Everyone was shocked. Maybe it was because Sally Face was dancing or maybe because Larry was reacting to a music that wasn’t metal. Truth be told everyone, Todd, Neil and even Travis Phelps were totally amazed by their coordination.  
Someone even asked if they were training to dance like that at the prom’s night.  
Still seeing the world uspide down, his head far away even from the fear that his prosthetic could fall – Larry was holding it from the back of his head –, Sal saw Ashley staring at them, surprised. She was in a pretty lilac dress, a circlet in her long hair and two full glasses in the hands.  
How did they end at the border of the dance floor after they had conquered its center?  
«What’s going on?» she shouted.  
«Sal wanted to dance!» Larry replied.  
Ashley quickly abandoned the glasses and reached the two of them.  
Sal didn’t know why, but holding Ashley’s and Larry’s hands seemed logic. They formed a circle and soon Todd and Neil were with them.  
They swirled among the confused students that couldn’t do anything except for letting them the space to dance in that odd way. Maybe they were criticizing but it didn’t matter.  
Sal begun to laugh without being able to control himself. There wasn’t a reason. He was just so happy to be there, with them. His friends.  
Soon Larry, Ashley, Todd and Neil were doing the same.  
He glanced at Larry. He couldn’t see his lips moving, but he knew Sal was thanking him. He just shooked his head.  
Damn, that last prom.  
It was definitely Sal’s best prom ever.


End file.
